A polyp is a growth of tissue raised from a membrane. Polyps may form along the inner lining of a gastro-intestinal (GI) tract and may be of interest to doctors for clinical diagnosis.
In-vivo imaging systems may be employed via an ingestible capsule to provide automated imaging of in-vivo lumens within a patient, such as, the GI tract. The imaging system captures and transmits images of the passage or cavity to an external recording device while passing through the body. The images, when combined in sequence, may form a moving image stream of the passage. The image stream recording the passage of the capsule through the patient may include many (e.g. 50,000) image frames. For a doctor or technician to review such a lengthy image sequence is generally impractical or impossible.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to have a system to automatically detect polyps in the in-vivo image stream. However, polyps may be difficult to detect, for example, due to the variety of polyp forms (e.g. polyps differ in size, shape, definition of edges, closed or open edges, color, etc.), false positive detection due to similar looking shapes (e.g. the circular opening of the in-vivo lumen passageway, closed-loop blood vessels, folds, bubbles, etc.), and/or imaging artifacts (shadows, occluded areas, etc.).